Abdul, the best way to handle that is to cover all the windows with black while setting up the shot. Then you can get the light level perfect. In a traditional dusk view like this, you should be getting almost no ambient daylight when you finally expose. We typically uncover the windows 30-40 minutes prior to dusk and spend that time hiding reflections. When the window reaches the desirable brightness level you should be ready to go.

Cheers,CB

Thanks this is a great tip, is there any particular materiel you find best to use as a cover? I am thinking about trying your suggestion with the black plastic bags made for large garbage containers; cheap and light.

Thanks this is a great tip, is there any particular materiel you find best to use as a cover? I am thinking about trying your suggestion with the black plastic bags made for large garbage containers; cheap and light. I can see this working in typical spaces like standard hotel bedrooms, but for challenging irregular spaces this will not work.

Won't they pick up shine that might still be apparent when you make the exterior exposure? Plastic has highlights, black or not, if light hits it.

Black plastic would cause problems, if there are other reflective objects that pick up those reflections. I've used this technique, and the easiest solution is to use black flocked paper sheets. They're easy to carry and use.

I'm pretty sure that Chris is not talking about multiple exposures or digital manipulation. He's saying you black out the windows during setup so that you can replicate the conditions that will exist when you make the final shot (after the sun has gone down).

I've never worked that way, but I carry several very large pieces of black poly poplin cloth (10' x 20') that I can block windows with. Garbage bags would be fine, but a pain in the ass. Once you've figured out your lighting, remove the window coverings and wait for mother nature to take care of the rest, then push the button on top of the camera. Finished photo.

In the shot I posted, that would have been *really* hard to do; it's floor-to-ceiling glass on two sides. But I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted and I was very close on my first try. I ran the shutter speed up to kill most of the ambient so I could see what my lights were doing. Hardest thing to deal with was the black granite column on the right edge. And the coolest thing my assistant ever did for me was running a skinny strip of black gaff tape up the shaft of the floor lamp so it didn't reflect in the glass as a distracting vertical line.

Back story: This place was originally shot by Mary Nichols for AD in 1999. It's been sold, gutted, and re-done (by my client) but the coffee table was considered too heavy to move, so it appears (along with the view, of course) in both mine and Mary's photos, which is kind of fun. Hard to tell in my photo, but that's the AD re-print of the article on the round table under the bowl of almonds.

You are a lucky man. Today you won't be out with the three girls alone. There would be a design director, an art director, perhaps a deputy art director, a deputy photo editor, some more photo editors and designers and a few more iPhone pinchers and Blackberry button pushers. Oh, I forgot – a director of photography (this is perhaps the photographer).

I like your image(s) a lot. Where you a part of the black boys group from the east end? – – Brian D – – David B – – Terence D – and – Rob C?

You are a lucky man. Today you won't be out with the three girls alone. There would be a design director, an art director, perhaps a deputy art director, a deputy photo editor, some more photo editors and designers and a few more iPhone pinchers and Blackberry button pushers. Oh, I forgot – a director of photography (this is perhaps the photographer).

I like your image(s) a lot. Where you a part of the black boys group from the east end? – – Brian D – – David B – – Terence D – and – Rob C?

Best,Johannes

Hi Johannes,

Thanks for the compliments, but sorry to disappoint: Rob C was alive, of an age with, and working at the same time, but up north in the distant Scottish mists and not the fourth musketeer in any trinity!

It would have been nice to go south, but the problem was the same as faced most folks not already living in the London area: property values. I’d a nice home in Glasgow; eventually we closed the rented studio and added on a studio to the house, and all of that would probably only have bought us a garage in London. With a wife and two kids, there was never any way I was going to risk effing up their lives on a wilder ego trip than I was already on. In fact, I came to appreciate being where I was because I did manage to carve myself a pleasant clientele that allowed a lot of delightful work opportunities – as can be seen from the calendar stuff on the website. Unfortunately, I did a Duffy and destroyed the entire fashion work that I couldn’t sell back to clients when we were leaving to live in Spain. It simply never entered my mind that one day it could be interesting beyond the job itself. I did far more fashion work early on than I ever did calendars, which happened in the later years of my career, so most of my life’s work is lost forever. That’s one thing about the digital age: you learn that pictures can have many lives and to destroy nothing!

Yes, the ‘team’ way that shoots follow nowadays had already started to happen more or less as my commercial work drew to a close; I didn’t like it at all, and to be brutaly honest, it wasn’t a system in which I could do anything much – I more or less need to be alone with the people in the shots or I get distracted, confused, short-tempered and feel like telling the others to just bloody do it themselves. Not clever business, but how it works for me. Yet it’s strange: as budgets supposedly get tighter, more people go out to do the same job than were ever needed before! I watched Helmut Newton say more or less the same thing on tv, that photography had become so expensive that everything (that had once been pure fun) had become such a big deal.

Thanks this is a great tip, is there any particular materiel you find best to use as a cover? I am thinking about trying your suggestion with the black plastic bags made for large garbage containers; cheap and light.

I can see this working in typical spaces like standard hotel bedrooms, but for challenging irregular spaces this will not work.

Abdul, the best way to handle that is to cover all the windows with black while setting up the shot. Then you can get the light level perfect. In a traditional dusk view like this, you should be getting almost no ambient daylight when you finally expose. We typically uncover the windows 30-40 minutes prior to dusk and spend that time hiding reflections. When the window reaches the desirable brightness level you should be ready to go.

Cheers,CB

Or you could always see what your client (and assistants) are made of by setting the start time 1.5 hours before the sun rises. Thankfully the resort I just shot put me up for the time I was there.

"Photography is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent moving furniture." Arnold Newman“Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” William Faulkner

Or you could always see what your client (and assistants) are made of by setting the start time 1.5 hours before the sun rises. Thankfully the resort I just shot put me up for the time I was there.

That would depend on where the sun would be rising though. If it would be rising in the general direction of where you are shooting, it might not be so good, depending on the effect you are trying to achieve.

That would depend on where the sun would be rising though. If it would be rising in the general direction of where you are shooting, it might not be so good, depending on the effect you are trying to achieve.

Yes, that is true. In this case the sun rose right in front of where I was and we were hoping for a dramatic colorful sunrise. However, the clouds that rolled in had a different idea.

"Photography is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent moving furniture." Arnold Newman“Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” William Faulkner

Kodachrome 64 Pro converted (not for the cal, of course) to b/w because I like the way the film translates. I used to read about how unfriendly Kodachrome was to scanning; shows to go you that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Nice assistant/makeup artist... just kidding, she was one of the models.

Direct sunshine after a prolonged lunch awaiting said sun to go a little further down. The skins were simply covered in sun-protect oil to, well, protect, and then the girls dipped themselves into the sea between shots. No fills, no frills; just either a 135mm or 200mm Nikkor, tripod and either F or F2 Photomic. Exposure metering: Invercone, Weston Master something or, perhaps, the Minolta Flashmeter thing - can't really remember too clearly. It was a good lunch. Amazing how you could still focus with your head spinning a little bit. Must have been those split-image screens. Could use one now!

We used to carry a gardening water-spray bottle too, which my wife used to spray them with when they dried up... Mostly, though, we used to shoot either early morning or late afternoon, but like I said, lunch encouraged us that day.